ILL HEARTS

3

Jungkook ~ March 8, 2019

My favorite class was the one when the teacher said "get your sketchbooks, and practice", and we could sit in a quiet buzz of pencils rushing against the paper, and draw for ninety minutes. I wasn't anti-school, but I wasn't the most diligent student, either. Getting a mark without any after school work was my favorite way of passing a subject.

Also because Eunbi sat three rows away from me, and there was no way I could get involved in the endless, jaw-clenching bickering. Fridays were for peace, and I always got the most out of it. Especially that Friday, with a crucial for my career match slowly creeping closer and leaving my shoulders tense as I indulged in more practice and more stress.

"If you wanna continue, you can keep going. I'm staying here for the whole next period. If you're done, you can go," the teacher said, and I took a break as majority of the group packed their stuff, creating unnecessary fuss. Including Eunbi. A smile was hard to push down when I knew she was going to be far away from me. Her presence in the room was enough to disturb the feng shui, or whatever.

I stayed with four other kids, but they all left after ten minutes. I worked on a messy sketch of a cartoon scene, something I made up over the last three weeks during these classes, and I wanted to finish it before leaving. My practice was delayed an hour anyways, so I took my time with perfecting a lip ring around one of the characters' lip, and a tiger tattoo on the other. I could easily sell it to someone to make an actual cartoon out of it, but it wasn't my expertise so I kept it to myself.

Done with the sketch, I packed it all up. Before leaving my desk, I swept across the room to confirm I was the last one to finish. No kids in sight, only a lonely sketchbook on the floor. Scattered without any sense so someone must have dropped it.

"Sir," I said, approaching the desk. "Someone left their sketchbook here."

"Oh," he said, pushing his glasses higher. "Could you give it to them?"

"But-"

"Thank you so much!" He beamed, getting away with bothering with it on his own. And just because I didn't want to lose the title of his favorite student (which had its benefits), I forced a smile and took the book with me.

Walking down the empty hall, I opened the sketchbook to know which loser I had to approach to give it back. The seals and starfish stickers in the top right corner signaled nothing good.

It wasn't a sketchbook. It had no other drawings than a the one of an anime girl on the first page that held a 'do not read' sign. Impressive drawing, but I had nothing to be surprised with considering I was just leaving the art class. But still, it had a nice feel to it, of someone's unique style.

Not anyone's. Eunbi's. And it wasn't a sketchbook, but a diary, which made me freeze in the between the gray walls. A diary of the human I hated in my hands, an opportunity to be more of an asshole I was, a way to get at her and give myself an unusual satisfaction. I shouldn't be reading her diary, considering the first page, and I was honestly petrified of what I'd find inside, but I stuck my finger in the random spot between the pages and flipped it open.

It must be my biggest dream. A love story. A perfect love story. Like a princess loved by a prince in a fairy tale. Like in books. My biggest dream is to be loved and cherished, admired, understood. I want someone to look at me like I'm the only one in their world. I want someone to go out of their way to show me they love me. All those cheesy romantic stuff, like flowers. And less cheesy, something unique. I just wanna live a real life love story.

I scoffed, closing the page as soon as I finished reading. "A love story." It must have been the most ridiculous, and the most Eunbi thing I'd read in my entire life. She was an annoying perfectionist. Her, her behavior, her words, her grades, even her love story had to be flawless. Her life had to be ideal, without a tint of mistake to it. Staged. She was staged, and that's what I hated so much. She crafted herself like a movie character, ridding herself of every flaw, bad habit, mistake.